Over the last five years since the financial crisis, American families have been forced to tighten their purse strings and balance their own budgets more than they ever have had to before.

Hard decisions are made each and every day at kitchen tables across the country. And we should expect nothing less from our elected leaders.

Also over the past five years, Washington politicians of both parties have gone out of their way to try to create fear in the markets, essentially manipulating the markets into making the other side bend. And every year small investors pay for it.

The national debt has swelled by $6 trillion, to $18 trillion, and there’s not much to show for it.

We have no wage growth. In fact, our unemployment problem is still huge.

Debt-ceiling fights and fiscal cliff fiascos have become an annual occurrence — like Thanksgiving, only with nothing to be thankful for.

But this year we have a shutdown, which is something that hasn’t happened in 17 years. And, while troublesome, it’s merely the warm-up act for what is becoming an extremely contentious debt-ceiling fight.

Enough is enough.

It is obvious to many of us that a deal will ultimately be struck — probably in the dark of night on a weekend, so the politicians can attach all their favorite provisions at the very last minute.

But these now-annual shenanigans have an even steeper cost. They scare investors out of the markets at precisely the wrong times, and they cause lasting harm to both our financial system and middle-class families’ retirement savings.

The Beltway bums love to manipulate the public markets — and what better way to do that than to play a game of chicken with America’s savings and retirement money?

Remember the classic definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.